While Twitter, for example, would remove a pic from its content delivery network (CDN) pretty much as soon as you did, Facebook was holding onto them. This was something that, according to reporting from Ars Technica, it was doing for more than three years. What did mean in practice? Click on a direct URL to a party pic you thought you'd deleted long ago, and you'd be staring at yourself blacked out on a barstool puffing on a joint.

But now these links only have a shelf life of 30 days, and in some cases Facebook said they'll die more quickly. That's still a little shady, but better than that old picture of you bonging a beer at a college tailgate living somewhere in the labyrinth of Facebook's servers for all eternity. This doesn't mean that you can hop on your profile and post snaps of your most elicit evenings with reckless abandon, but if something slips through the cracks, you have less of a reason to worry. [Ars Technica]